Transparent OLEDs demoed When the whole world’s going OLED TV crazy, how can a telly manufacturer differentiate itself? By creating a transparent model, of course. LG_transparent_OLED LG's transparent OLED screen apparently connected into a PC Credit: Tech-On Unfortunately for LG and Samsung, both firms have the same idea and recently demo'd …
My computer tells me it's in 32-bit colour mode, that's all well and good, but only three of those four bytes are used for colour information, the fourth byte should be used for alpha, but it isn't because my monitor isn't transparent like these wonderous things.
I'm curious if production-model transparent OLED displays will be the first true 32-bit display with variable alpha on each pixel? It means we could get rid of the notion of desktop wallpapers and just have our icons and windows displayed on a sheet of fine quality glass.
A man can dream, no?
//SteveJobs^H^H^H^Hesus because Apple will be the first company to implement this technology in a consumer-swooning product.
I hate the big tv screen taking up so much wall in the living room - to turn it to transparent would be great.
I've looked in those 'mirror' ones but they don't offer a good viewing once on.
Or even bendy would be good - have it slide up from a mantle piece then slid back down again....
... but then it occurred to me that if you could get it transparent enough when inactive (ie not tinted like a rapper's Escalade) and combined it with an LED back panel that could be turned black on demand - well then you could have your television in your living room window. Additionally you'd be able to watch TV from you garden by clearing the back panel and horizontally flipping the picture.
So 'd like one of those please, it would be nice to have a living room without an obvious TV sitting at the center of attention.
These will be perfect for shop windows - where transparency is key, but valuable advertising space also retained. Cost is not important, but visibility in mixed light is; so OLED technology will be perfect.
The best equivalent I've seen so far is laser projection onto a specially coated portion of the window; which has to remain in relative shadow during the day. Displays built into the window will be much more promising, although costly when the window is broken...
... I seem to be having failure of imagination. Why would I want to be able to see through a TV/computer/phone screen? More to the point, why should I want anyone in front of me to see what I have on my computer/phone screen? I can see some specialist applications (advertising screens, maybe, or cheap head-up displays in cars, but otherwise there seems to be a limited market in the real world.
"Additionally you'd be able to watch TV from you garden by clearing the back panel and horizontally flipping the picture."
You *really* want your neighbuors to know which pr0n films you watch?
Then there's the whole copyright thing of playing a rented/bought DVD on a Window TV where the whole world can watch the "illegal" public performance. You'll need curtains on the outside.
Think about glasses with computer overlays, car sat nav and displays on the windscreen, the same for many other vehicles of course (aircraft etc, better HUD), the latest compact digital camcorder (like Flip) that uses a transparent display with overlays rather than a full LCD display to extand battery life by hours.
Thats just three uses right off the top of my head, these guys are a heap smarter than me, they probably have some stunning ideas for this.
You can tell from the comments here, who the sci-fi fans are. The most obvious application for these types of screens is for HUD's, the dream app being the Augmented Reality goggles that feature in a number of sci-fi books - check out Halting State by Charles Stross amongst others. An example from this book is the police-net goggles, that allow the copper to see tags against each property they look at / walk past showing details of the residents, flagging up the crims and the neds etc.
The augmented reality glasses won't work. What everyone forgets is that the screen is about one inch from your eyball. You can't focus that close unless there is an approriate lens between the screen and your eye. A lens that makes it impossible to focus on anything past the screen. The current augmented reality glasses use a partially silvered mirror to project the image from a screen though the needed close focussing lens, and hence into your field of view.
Same problem exists for HUDs too. A proper HUD places the image at infinity so you don't need to refocus your eyes, and the image appears in focus superimposed on the field of view. Just a panel on the windscreen will be an annoying blur when focussed on the road, and the road a blur when focussing on the screen.
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